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More wines available from Quinta Do Crasto
750ml
Bottle:
$52.94
An especially dark and dense Colheita Tawny, this has great richness and a fine balance between the fruit and the...
750ml
Bottle:
$32.63
Lemon in colour, with light golden hues. Expressive on the nose, with citrus aromas, delicate floral notes and a...
Pre-Arrival
Quinta Do Crasto Vinha Da Ponte 2018
750ml - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$204.93
A beauty, with an enticing range of complex black currant and blackberry, sweet tobacco and bay leaf, iron and smoke...
More Details
Winery
Quinta Do Crasto
Vintage: 2012
2012 has, so far been a positive year for wineries around the world. While it may be a little too early to speak of the wines being made in the northern hemisphere, European and North American wineries have already begun reporting that their harvesting season has been generally very good, and are predicting to continue with the kind of successes they saw in 2011. However, 2012 has been something of a late year for France, due to unpredictable weather throughout the summer, and the grapes were ripening considerably later than they did in 2011 (which was, admittedly, an exceptionally early year). French wineries are claiming, though, that this could well turn out to be advantageous, as the slow ripening will allow the resulting wines to express more flavour and features of the terroir they are grown in.
The southern hemisphere has seen ideal climatic conditions in most of the key wine producing countries, and Australia and New Zealand particularly had a superb year, in particular with the Bordeaux varietal grapes that grow there and which love the humidity these countries received plenty of. Also enjoying a fantastic year for weather were wineries across Argentina and Chile, with the Mendoza region claiming that 2012 will be one of their best vintages of the past decade. Similar claims are being made across the Chilean wine regions, where Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon had an especially good year. These two grape varietals also produced characterful wines on the coastal regions of South Africa this year.
Region: Douro
From their beautifully rich Bordeaux style wines, to their famous fortified wines, the wineries of Douro in Portugal have long been recognized as being amongst the finest of the Old World. For over two thousand years, Douro has been an important center of fine wine production, and it isn't difficult to see why the earliest attempts at viticulture led to an ever expanding wine industry in the region. The beautiful Douro river provides the vineyards with all the moisture and nutrients they need in order to grow fruit of real character and flavor, and the long, baking hot summers help ripen the grapes and intensify their juices. Today, Douro wines are popular all over the world, and wineries are producing more bottles than ever before to keep up with demand. Although the region is still most famous for the fortified wines of Porto, the still wines have centuries of tradition, and a whole set of distinctive flavors and characteristics that simply cannot be ignored.
Country: Portugal
Portugal has been an important center for wine production ever since the Phoenicians and Carthaginians discovered that the many native grape varietals that grow in the country could be cultivated for making excellent wines. After all, Portugal has something of an ideal wine producing climate and terrain; lush green valleys, dry, rocky mountainsides and extremely fertile soil helped by long, hot summers and Atlantic winds. Today, such a climate and range of terroir produces an impressive variety of wines, with the best wines said to be coming out of the Douro region, the Alentejo and the Colares region near Lisbon. Portugal has an appellation system two hundred years older than France's, and much effort is made by regulating bodies to ensure that the quality of the country's produce remains high, and the wines remain representative of the regions they are grown in.